3.1 Local Safeguarding Children Board - Role and Function

SCOPE OF THIS CHAPTER

The Children Act 2004 required each local authority to establish a Safeguarding Children Board. Chapter 3 of Working Together to Safeguard Children, 2015 sets out in detail the arrangements for the work of each Local Safeguarding Children Board. This procedure provides a summary only.

AMENDMENT

This chapter was amended in September 2016, links to Appendices 1 and 2 were updated from documents to links to the related LSCB website.

Quality assure practice, including through joint audits of case files involving practitioners and identifying lessons to be learned; and

Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of training, including multi-agency training, for all professionals in the area. Training should cover how to identify and respond early to the needs of all vulnerable children, including: unborn children; babies; older children; young carers; disabled children; and those who are in secure settings;

Play a strong role in supporting information sharing between and within organisations and addressing any barriers to information sharing. This should include ensuring that a culture of information sharing is developed and supported as necessary by multi-agency training;

In addition, require a person or body to comply with a request for information. This can only take place where the information requested is for the purpose of enabling or assisting the LSCB to perform its functions. Any request for information about individuals must be necessary and proportionate to the reasons for the request. LSCBs should be mindful of the burden of requests and should explain why the information is needed.

3. Accountability

Whilst the LSCB has a role in coordinating and ensuring the effectiveness of local individuals’ and organisations’ work to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, it is not accountable for their operational work.

Each Board partner retains its own existing lines of accountability for safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children by their services.

Whilst the LSCB does not have the power to direct other organisations, it does have a role in making clear where improvement is needed.

4. LSCB Chair

In order to provide effective scrutiny, the LSCB should be independent. It should not be subordinate to, nor subsumed within, other local structures.

Every LSCB should have an independent chair who can hold all agencies to account.

It is the responsibility of the Chief Executive (Head of Paid Service) to appoint or remove the LSCB chair with the agreement of a panel including LSCB partners and lay members. The Chief Executive, drawing on other LSCB partners and, where appropriate, the Lead Member will hold the Chair to account for the effective working of the LSCB.

5. Membership

The LSCB is made up of organisations which will designate particular, named people as their LSCB member so that there is a consistency and continuity in membership.

Members will be those with a strategic role in relation to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children within their organisation. They should be able to:

Representation from schools, which means taking steps to ensure that the following are represented: the governing body of a maintained school; the proprietor of a non-maintained special school; the proprietor of a city technology college, a city college for the technology of the arts or an Academy or free school; and the governing body of a further education institution the main site of which is situated in the authority’s area. Independent schools should also be included as appropriate (Chapter 3, WT 2015).

Other members may include:

NSPCC;

Faith groups;

State and Independent Schools;

Further Education Colleges;

Children’s Centres;

GP’s;

Independent Health care organisations;

Voluntary and Community Sector Organisations;

Armed Forces;

Immigration Service.

The LSCB should either include on its Board, or be able to draw on appropriate expertise and advice from, frontline professionals from all the relevant sectors. This includes a designated doctor and nurse, the Director of Public Health, Principal Child and Family Social Worker and the voluntary and community sector.

In addition, the LSCB will make strategic links with other organisations and individuals, for example Substance Misuse Services, the local MAPPA, dental health services, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Coroner, either through inviting them to join the Board or through some other mechanism.

The Lead Member for Children should be a participating observer of the LSCB. In practice this means routinely attending meetings as an observer and receiving all its written reports.

6. Structure

The LSCB, under the oversight of the Directors of Children and Young People's Services, will consult with Chief Officers of other partner organisations as required. The structure of the Leicester Safeguarding Children Board and the Leicestershire & Rutland Local Safeguarding Children Board are set out in the following diagrams:

8. LSCB Annual Report

The Chair must publish an annual report on the effectiveness of child safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children in the local area (this is a statutory requirement under Section 14A of the Children Act 2004). The annual report should be published in relation to the preceding financial year and should fit with local agencies' planning, commissioning and budget cycles. The report should be submitted to the Chief Executive, Leader of the Council, the local police and crime commissioner and the Chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board.

The report should provide a rigorous and transparent assessment of the performance and effectiveness of local services. It should identify areas of weakness, the causes of those weaknesses and the action being taken to address them as well as other proposals for action. The report should include lessons from reviews undertaken within the reporting period.

The report should also list the contributions made to the LSCB by partner agencies and details of what the LSCB has spent, including on Child Death Reviews, Serious Case Reviews and other specific expenditure such as learning events or training.